


and grieve what i happen to grieve

by spiritphones



Series: mangling canon for fun and profit [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: ADHD Aubrey Little, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Duck Newton, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Gen, Post-Canon, Spoilers, Trans Aubrey Little, Trans Duck Newton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 00:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20787443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiritphones/pseuds/spiritphones
Summary: Aubrey makes a phone call.





	and grieve what i happen to grieve

**Author's Note:**

> title from should have known better by sufjan stevens
> 
> spoilers for the whole amnesty arc and finale, even though i basically throw out the epilogue entirely
> 
> warnings:  
talk about grief and death, specifically related to ned's death and aubrey's feelings about it, as well as her fear of others dying; a character has a panic attack; general depictions of trauma

She decides to finally call her dad.

After all’s said and done, the gate restored and her bunny in her arms and her butt on Duck’s couch, she is tired. Luckily she’s gotten a fucking _ sandwich, _because Leo Tarkesian is a godsend who actually has groceries in his apartment.

So. She’s gonna ask Duck to use his landline.

Lots of things are happening in the apartment building. Hornets being stitched up, Sylphs reuniting, Barclay making mountains of soup in Mrs. Pearson’s piddly lil’ kitchen. Thacker is in a closet somewhere with a headlamp on and Duck’s noise-cancelling headphones writing down notes. Jake’s out looking for anybody who needs help with his newfound driving skills. Duck himself is running around like a chicken without a head. He looks a little shaken up, actually, which is weird considering his tendency to never facially react to anything. 

He sees her on his couch as he comes in for a break. Aubrey knows she looks both manic and like a train hit her, her eyes orange under the brown like melted chocolate and her fishnet leggings ripped to shit. 

“Aw, hey there Lady Flame.”

He knows calling Aubrey that makes her smile, which is why he does it. It still makes her give a little grin.

“Hey yourself, _ Wayne_.”

He makes a face at her. She scrunches her nose like Dr. Harris Bonkers back at him. He sticks out his tongue back and says, “You know that ain’t my real name.”

She does. When he saw her trans flag patch on her pack, he’d helped her get set up for some discounted clean estrogen from Kirby, who “deals” in hormones for Pochahontas county. Duck had apparently let his little sister pick out his legal name when he legally transitioned, since his dad wouldn’t let him put Duck. Which was just fucking adorable, but she’d never tell him that.

Aubrey wonders where that name came from. Nickname at first obviously. She’d gotten Aubrey from these baby name books she’d kept discreetly reading in the corner of the library where nobody could see her. Maybe he just liked ducks?

“Hey what’s your favorite bird?” she spills out with her fingers stroking across Dr. Bonkers’ back fur. 

He stops where he’s gone to fiddle around in his kitchen. “Uhhh… corvids.”

“Cor-whats?”

“Like uhm…” He waves his arms around like he does whenever he’s trying to explain something he really likes. “Crows and ravens and what-nots. They’re real smart, right? Can use tools and everythin’. Hell, up at the ranger station, we got a couple crows that come by. I give ‘em food ‘cus they like to eat with me, and they even got a special call that means _ me, _right? Like a name. And one time, Annabelle- she’s my fav’rite- Annabelle came up to me…”

Aubrey settles back into the couch and lets its overly soft flannel cushions envelop her like it’s eating her whole. Duck’s rambling stories settle over her like a fog- well, not a fog, the whole Quell sitch was less than twenty-four hours ago. Like a warm rain. 

“-and Juno said she didn’ think it was true, but she doesn’t like birds anyhow so I figure she’s biased-“

“So it’s not ducks?”

Duck pauses, caught up in infodumping and oh man, she’d brought up favorite birds a while ago, that probably didn’t make sense.

“Favorite birds,” she clarifies. 

He looks a little baffled, taking his hat off his head to fidget with it. It’s pretty singed. She can still hear motion all throughout the building, but Duck’s apartment has been clearly laid out as a quiet zone for right now so it’s just him and Aubrey.

“Naw, naw, it’s not- Wait, ‘cause of my name?”

“Well yeah.”

“Why the hell would ducks be my favorite? Fuckers are demonic.”

“I thought you loved _ all _ wildlife!” She drapes an arm across her face, scandalized. “I can’t believe this. Duck Newton, local forest ranger, _ hates an animal._”

He slips his singed hat back on his singed hair. “Yeah yeah, yuck it up. I gotta get back out there and find Minnie.”

“Oh man, speaking of, I saw those _ aaabs. _ You didn’t tell me Minerva is _ hot._”

He makes a disgusted face of horror at her. “EW, god no! She’s my fuckin’ teacher!”

“Yeah, but she’s got the _ boooood_.” Aubrey wriggles her eyebrows at Duck. Dr. Harris Bonkers also stares at Duck, and if he had eyebrows he would probably wiggle them too. She’s so fucking proud.

“Nope, no, I ain’t thinkin’ about that,” he says, and then, face turned in like a fun lemon, “Lord, Aubrey, I met ‘er when I was _ eighteen__! _She’s like my mom or some shit!”

“Ah,” Aubrey says sagely. “So she’s a MILF.”

He points his hat at her as he makes his way back to the front door with a granola bar in hand. “You better shut your mouth before I tell Barclay to wash it out with soap.”

“Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you can’t have taste, Duck,” she tells him. 

He tugs open the door as he struggles to pull a butt-ugly brown windbreaker on over his torn ranger polo. “I swear to God, Aubrey Little, we will use that Dial shit.”

He makes to leave, and then a whole train of thought crashes through her head in a few milliseconds, and she puts up her hand and says, “Wait!”

He waits. It takes her a minute to let her mouth catch up to her thoughts.

“Can I use your landline?”

“Don’t see why not.” He turns again to leave.

“Where is it?”

Duck slowly turns back to her. He wears an expression of pure exhaustion. To be fair, they’ve all been awake for like a day and a half straight. “Aubrey. You’ve lived here for two months.”

She raises her eyebrow at him. He rubs his fingers on his brow just like Mama does when Jake tries to fit seventeen marshmallows in his mouth at once and Barclay has to do the Heimlich.

“It’s in the guest room.”

“Alright thanks Duck! Loveyoubye!” The last part comes out really fast as the door closes behind him and clicks shut.

Alright. The phone is in the guest room.

Aubrey looks down at Dr. Harris Bonkers, P.H.D. He has his set of baby keys that he’s nibbling on.

No excuses left now.

She picks him up and takes him to his walled off playpen with all his nice toys and bedding that Duck helped her set up in the corner. He’s a bit heavier now that he’s a magical rabbit, but stuffing her face in his fur still feels like safety.

The good doctor settles in nicely in his bedding. Duck took her to the ranger office and let her print out a new copy of his PHD that she had to leave behind at the Lodge when they were avoiding the FBI. Luckily, she’d gotten all his toys, including his lil’ plastic baby phone.

Phone. Phone.

Right, phone. Okay.

Her hands feel clammy, even when she lights a small fire in them absently. It flickers off the walls as she walks until she remembers to actually turn on the hall light and not wander in the dark.

The guest room has been Aubrey and Minerva’s for the last while now. It’s little more than an oversized broom closet, but it’s got some of Minerva’s wooden sandals by the door and Aubrey’s haphazard stash of flashpaper in some tupperwares. The phone is, in fact, in here, behind a flag she put up that she guesses Duck has just been lifting to get to the phone instead of asking her to move it.

God. That’s just like him.

She knows her dad’s number by heart. She’s made many aborted attempts at the call she’s about to make.

Aubrey’s hands are shaking.

She remembers to punch in the extension, and then she presses in the distant area code and pauses.

Breathe in.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Breathe out.

The phone rings once, twice. On the third ring it picks up to a groggy voice she knows.

_ “Little household.” _

“...Dad?”

A sucked-in breath, and suddenly her father sounds much more awake. He’s two hours behind Kepler but it’s still night there. He was probably asleep. _ “Aubrey?” _

“Hey, dad.”

_ “Hey- hi, baby. What- Where are you calling from?” _

“I’m… I’m at a friend’s place out in West Virginia.”

Her father’s voice is making her choke up. She hasn’t spoken to him since she entered the radio quiet zone. Even before that she almost never called, and he was too patient with her to call first. His voice feels like a memory more than a sound.

_ “Well… As wonderful as it is to hear from you, what are you doing calling in the middle of the night?” _

“Some stuff’s… happened. And I-“

She has to stop for a second because she’s started to sniffle, but she is almost twenty-one and she is strong and also kind of a goddess and she is _ not going to get snot on Duck’s landline. _

“I miss you,” Aubrey settles on.

_ “Aubrey, you know I love you but- What kind of stuff? Aubrey, are you in trouble? You know I can bail you-“ _

This makes her laugh a little hysterically. “Dad, oh my god, I’m not calling from jail.”

He harrumphs good-naturedly over the phone, and the dry humor of it makes her heart ache. _ “Well, that’s good to hear."_

There’s a lull. She can hear the cicadas. The only light in the room is coming in from the open hall door. 

Her clothes on the floor, Minerva’s nest of blankets on the bed. The flame sheets she’d managed to take from the lodge, Dr. Bonkers’ spare food. The half-open window with broken blinds. The smell of ash.

“My friend died,” is what she ends up saying.

_ “Oh… oh, baby,” _he says.

Aubrey breaks.

“It’s been two months and I still go to say something to him, dad. He’s like a hole, and I hate him for being dead, and I hate him for leaving, and I _ told him to leave_, daddy, I said-“

_ “Baby. Aubrey. Firefly, listen to me.” _

She’s crying, hot tears trailing through the grime on her cheeks.

_ “It’s alright. It’ll be alright.” _

“I never dealt with it,” she gurgles. It’s like months of shock is suddenly being washed away by waves of hot grief. Sylvain in her chest, warming her like a hug from the inside. “We didn’t have _ time, _ we barely had a funeral, I had people to help and they needed me and I didn’t- I don’t know how to deal with this, I don’t want to deal with this again, I can’t, I _ can’t._"

She wants to be angry instead. Anger is like fire, and she knows how to deal with fire. Grief like this, like pouring waves wearing away at her shores…

“And my friends nearly died _ tonight, _ and I realized, if Ned can die, so can Dani. God, dad, so could _ Jake_, he’s just a _ kid. _ And I realized you could die, and the last time I’d called you was to ask if I could use your insurance, and I hadn’t even told you about how big Dr. Bonkers has gotten or about my new girlfriend or about Ned’s show, and _ I _could’ve died and you would’ve only found out when you got a phone call…”

_ “Baby, come on, I know it hurts but you’ve gotta breathe. Breathe with me, okay. Just like the counselor said, in for seven, out for two.” _

She breathes. It does hurt. She does it anyway. The world is dizzy and gray and it’s hard to do it, but she breathes in and she breathes out.

_ “One, two, that’s it Aubrey. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Good job, let’s do it again okay? One, two…” _

By the time Aubrey can focus again, she is on her knees on the stained carpet with Duck’s cat staring up at her with big sad eyes and with the phone cord held like a lifeline.

_ “You with me, baby?” _

“Yeah,” she croaks out. It feels like she’s got a frog in her throat.

_ “Alright. Okay.” _

He stops, and she realizes hazily that she’s had a panic attack.

“I’m here,” she says.

_ “Alright. Aubrey, where are you at right now?” _

“Kepler.”

_ “This a West Virginia line then?” _

“Yeah.”

_ “Aubrey, would you…” _Her dad stops. Takes a breath. Speaks.

_ “Would you be willing to call me again?” _

She grips the phone and laughs a little. “Yeah. I think I’m- about done bein’ the strong silent type.”

This makes her dad laugh too, also a little bit hysterical, and he says warmly, “I can already hear the accent. How long have you been there?”

“About a year,” she sniffles. She settles Sugarpuff in her lap when the kitty claws up her legs to play with the broken fishnet strings. “I rolled into town after a show, I’ve been staying at the Amnesty Lodge. They’re really nice. Everyone’s really nice. I tried french onion soup.”

“Your mother mentioned that once or twice. Was it good?”

For once, the mention of her mother doesn’t make her sad. Maybe because of they’re talking about some _ baller soup. _“Oh fuck yes. You’ve gotta come try it sometime.”

“Language, baby.” And then the suggestion seems to draw him up short for a second. “You wouldn’t mind me coming over there and seeing you, then?”

“Dad,” she says, Sylvain in her heart and Barclay’s soup in her stomach and Duck’s ugly fucking cat on her legs, “I’d love that.”

**Author's Note:**

> clarification: i DID start this before listening to episode 36, and i do not think people who ship duck and minerva are bad or anything. the pairing just makes me incredibly uncomfortable for much more extensive reasons than duck says briefly in the fic, and i am not going to explore it in any of my work
> 
> anyways hey this is my series where i make my own version of the epilogue because while i did enjoy it, it left me deeply unsatisfied. it's all going to be heavily divergent from the epilogue and very self indulgent
> 
> also, the formatting may be strange in an attempt to make it readable to myself and others, because i need me some line breaks


End file.
